Loving every minute of being a mommy of three, a teacher of 24, and a wife of one.

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Thursday, December 6, 2012

Our Non Traditional Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving this year was very non traditional.

About a week before, we decided we should spend the holiday at a water park.

I booked a room at Water Park of America for Thanksgiving Day.

We convinced (forced) Christian to take a nap and then we were off at about 2pm.

We were in the water by 3:30. We loved the hotel room. It had a nice little room for the kids with two sets of bunk beds. This was ideal since the kids were already arguing about who got the top bunk.

The patio overlooked the water park so we could watch people try to 'surf.'

Christian started off at the little slide.

He wasn't standing still for long.

This little darling was having the time of her life.

I had tons of fun, but not being able to go on the water slides was a bit of a bummer.

However, both our kids were tall enough to go on everything.

They went on every water slide Mark would go on.

The only one Victoria didn't like was the 10 story family slide.

Christian loved them all.

While those three were off having a blast I had my swollen feet up reading

Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother's Soul.

It was so nice to have time to relax and enjoy my kids

- born and unborn -

and my hard working husband.

No lists.

No cleaning.

No organizing.

No worrying about a thing.

No phone calls.

No work.

Nobody other than the four of us.

Just pure fun family time.

On Thanksgiving night we had dinner at the hotel.

Mark and I had a prime rib dinner and the kids had chicken fingers.

They ran out of pumpkin pie (which is nothing short of a travesty for me)

but did serve pumpkin bread pudding.

Mark and the kids loved it, however, I opted for a second third dinner role with butter.

The kids were exhausted when we got back to our room.

We had so much fun, in fact, in the morning when we were packing

Mark suggested staying another night.

I thought about the long list of things I had to do at home and then said,

"Hell yes!"

That gave us an entire day at the water park.

While the kids were off playing Mark said something like

he's never seen a brother and sister so close in his life.

I quickly answered they're only like that because they have to be. If there was someone else here they wouldn't be playing together.

But I've been taking a closer look. And noticing, they are really close.

Maybe because they're so close in age.

Maybe because they truly like each other.

Either way I love it.

The following morning I peeked into their little room at the hotel and they were watching TV and they were both on one top bunk.

They didn't have to be in one bunk.

They chose to be close.

Ever since then I've been noticing how kind they are to each other.

Just today Victoria was telling me all about how the students in her class got to choose TWO books for their book bags and Victoria picked an I Spy book for Christian to look at. That was after she read Curious George to him.

Very very sweet.

I enjoyed the Lazy River.

It actually wasn't very lazy and there was a cool cave with waterfalls to go through.

Here's three of the cuties passing by me while I was reading.

We spent an hour at the arcade the first night.

Christian had his eye on the 200 ticket sword.

That's all he wanted and was thrilled when he walked out of there with it.

There's Christian coming down a slide.

But you can't see him because that guy ran in front of me to wave to his kid.

See Christian now?

It's like I Spy on the blog.

They really liked this thing and I loved how they were laughing and working together.

The wave pool was by far the kids' favorite spot.

I didn't mind floating around in it for a while but the current was pretty strong and I was tired of getting beaten by the waves.

The kids hopped aboard a "Pirate Ship" and couldn't have been more thrilled.

We needed a lot of snacks after such full days of playing.

We went back to the arcade the second night and played more and cashed our tickets.

Victoria was THRILLED to be able to get her 1,000 ticket puppy in a purse.